I saw a local news report the other day that said this was the last year that NYC would vote on its mechanical lever voting machines. The report said that the machines were fifty years old, and that we were the last place in the country that still used them.
An aging machine. The past’s tools for the present. An old tank, big and grey. The size of a chifforobe. Bulletproof. With levers and gears, making solid satisfying clunks. Voting as a factory process. Pull the giant red lever to lock in your vote. Like a bank vault or a widget maker. A democracy clockwork.
Fifty years old. Built in the heart of the 20th Century. 1958? Grey steel, dark wool, black plastic. And black and white, kept separate. A Gallup poll in 1958 showed that 96% of white Americans disapproved of interracial marriage. In 1958 it was illegal in Virginia for blacks and whites to marry. It took a couple with the name Loving to successfully defeat this, and win the right to love in the state that’s known “for lovers.” But not until 1967.
But now it’s 2008. And this machine, this time machine from 1958, the 1958 that everybody agreed was no place for interracial love, is telling me I can vote for a man that’s the result of that love. Black and white, together. I wonder what Mildred Loving, of the Virginia Lovings, would think of that. She died in May this year, but I bet she would be happy to see it. I’m happy to see it. And Virginia itself, capital of the Confederacy, birthplace of The Racial Integrity Act, seems happy to see it as well, if polls are any good.
I’m not voting for him because of it, his race, but I’m unspeakably proud of a country that can turn the page on its past mistakes. I’m proud of a country that makes good on its promise. That delivers on its hopes. That encourages love over hate. That’s my America.
And I’m proud that I’m able to make the last vote on this machine from the past be one for the future.
Hell. yes.
